{"id":109933,"date":"2016-03-08T09:17:32","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T14:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=109933"},"modified":"2022-06-22T08:53:48","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T12:53:48","slug":"understanding-pain-from-cells-to-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/03\/understanding-pain-from-cells-to-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Pain, from Cells to Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"grey-sidebar full-sidebar\">\n  <\/p>\n<h3>Center for Advancement in Managing Pain<\/h3>\n<p>One hundred million of anything is a lot. And according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that\u2019s approximately the number of people in the United States who suffer from chronic pain. Pain that is generally described as lasting longer than six months. Pain that can lead to all sorts of associated physical and mental symptoms affecting a person\u2019s ability to enjoy anything resembling a normal life. Pain that just won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n<p>In an age when advances in medicine seem to be announced almost daily, treatment of those with chronic pain appears to be as frustrating for those in the medical community as it is to those who suffer from it. Pain is complicated. Pain is stubborn. And pain often doesn\u2019t play by the normal rules of medicine.<\/p>\n<p>Under the guidance of Regina Cusson, dean of the School of Nursing, who is a long-time advocate of an integrated approach to pain prevention and management \u2013 and in collaboration with UConn Health and Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center \u2013 UConn has established the <a href=\"http:\/\/nursing.uconn.edu\/research\/center-for-advancement-in-managing-pain\/\">Center for Advancement in Managing Pain<\/a> (CAMP), in an effort to increase understanding of chronic pain and provide a source of relief to those millions who suffer from it. The Center&#8217;s director is Angela Starkweather. <\/aside>\n<p>Angela Starkweather is on a mission. A professor of nursing and a Fellow of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aannet.org\/\">American Academy of Nursing<\/a> who joined UConn in August 2015, she was recently named to head the Center for Advancement in Managing Pain (CAMP), and comes armed with a longstanding distaste for the status quo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy,\u201d she asks rhetorically, \u201cdo we tolerate a condition that affects millions of people \u2013 when it impacts not only their quality of life but their personal relationships, their ability to go to work or school, all the important things most of us take for granted. If pain was a named disease, there would be much more focus on eliminating it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Starkweather points out that not all pain is bad: acute onset pain is our body\u2019s way of telling us there\u2019s something wrong. It\u2019s when pain lasts far beyond a \u2018normal\u2019 duration, when it becomes disruptive to daily routines, that it becomes problematic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPain is something that we definitely think about in the scope of health care,&#8221; she says, &#8220;but the problem is we don\u2019t have reliable methods for identifying where the pain is coming from, or treatments that can target the specific underlying mechanisms. Oftentimes, we\u2019ll have patients who get to the point where they have chronic conditions and there\u2019s no easy fix. No silver bullet. This is equally frustrating to the patient and to the practitioner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDealing with pain is so personal that it\u2019s sometimes difficult to provide all the medical and emotional support a person needs,&#8221; she continues. &#8220;That\u2019s a key reason why CAMP is so important. We\u2019ll be studying pain from the cellular level to the systems level, in an effort to find answers.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n  <p>If pain was a named disease, there would be much more focus on eliminating it. <cite> &#8212 Angela Starkweather<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>CAMP is designated as a research center, although some of its work will take place in clinical settings both at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uchc.edu\/about\/healthcare.html\">UConn John Dempsey Hospital<\/a> in Farmington and at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.connecticutchildrens.org\/\">Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center<\/a> in Hartford. Among the Center\u2019s staff are experts exploring such diverse areas as how sensory information is transmitted to the central nervous system, the genetics of hypersensitivity to pain, how to alleviate depressive symptoms across the age spectrum, and the role of pharmaceuticals in pain management.<\/p>\n<p>Of the latter, Starkweather says that one of the obvious complications when dealing with pain is that current treatment often includes prescriptions for strong pain killers such as opioids: codeine, oxycodone, morphine, and the like. And while these medications can be life-savers, they are also associated with problems of misuse and addiction.<\/p>\n<p>She says that in her role as a clinician, she has seen all the benefits and all the problems associated with the drugs that are put under the umbrella of \u2018pain killers,\u2019 and that\u2019s one of the reasons pharmaceutical research along with psychological counseling and palliative care are considered to be in CAMP\u2019s bailiwick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIssues related to pain are so complex that we have to take an interdisciplinary approach,&#8221; she explains, &#8220;and our goal [with CAMP] is to be truly inclusive. Whatever different people can bring to the table \u2013 whether it\u2019s experience from bedside care or breakthroughs in a research lab \u2013 will help us to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Starkweather herself is currently a principal investigator on an NIH-funded study that is assessing predictors of persistent nonspecific low back pain, using measures of pain sensitivity, genetic variants, and gene expression profiles. Her research interests also include the bio-behavioral symptoms of pain among adolescents and adults who have chronic or life threatening conditions, with the goal of reducing symptoms, improving functionality, and enhancing the quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>There are relatively few centers devoted to researching the causes and cures of chronic pain in the United States, and one of the things that makes CAMP unusual is that, although it reaches across many disciplines, it is officially a part of the School of Nursing.<\/p>\n<p>Although relief from pain is the responsibility of everyone on a medical team, alleviation of pain is considered a core competency in UConn\u2019s nursing program, and that is the reason Starkweather and many other members of the team are based there.<\/p>\n<p>This is a natural fit, she say, because it is nurses who are often on the frontline of patient care, whether it\u2019s in an emergency department, on inpatient floors, in nursing homes, in hospice situations, or even in physicians\u2019 offices.<\/p>\n<p>Last fall, the School of Nursing joined 10 other schools in being designated a <a href=\"http:\/\/painconsortium.nih.gov\/NIH_Pain_Programs\/CoEPES.html\">Center of Excellence in Pain Education<\/a> by the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium. In the fall of 2016, it will begin awarding a post-baccalaureate Certificate in Pain Management. This, too, points to the commitment the School of Nursing brings to the endeavor.<\/p>\n<p>Starkweather also points to the \u2018value added\u2019 by CAMP\u2019s close association with <a href=\"http:\/\/medicine.uchc.edu\/\">UConn\u2019s medical school<\/a> and with the <a href=\"http:\/\/isg.uconn.edu\/\">Institute for Systems Genomics, <\/a>with its focus on personalized medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t promise we\u2019ll find the cure to chronic pain in the immediate future,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge task and not an easy challenge. But we have assembled a powerful lineup and I\u2019m confident that our work will lead to improvements in the care of individuals and families afflicted with pain and in the field of pain management.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new center at UConn is devoted to finding answers to chronic pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":109999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1877,2231,1868,2225,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1935],"class_list":["post-109933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nur","category-health-well-being","category-meds","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-edu-homepage","series-pain-through-the-ages"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 01:50:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109933"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187406,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109933\/revisions\/187406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/109999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109933"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=109933"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=109933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}